“Yes,” Miriam said.
“I think he did.”
“Then why didn’t he just tell me himself?
In the room, before—”
“Because Gerald was coming back.” She said it quietly, like a fact she had been carrying for hours.
“Gerald called the hospital that afternoon.
Frank heard the nurse confirm he was on his way.
That’s why Frank sent you out.
He needed you gone before Gerald arrived.
He needed you safe and moving toward the truth before Gerald could get to you first.”
The last words Frank had ever said to me.
*Go there.
Now.*
Not a dying man’s confusion.
A warning.
My phone lit up on the cushion beside me.
A text from Gerald: *Heard the news about Frank.
So sorry, sweetheart.
I didn’t reply to Gerald’s text that night.
I sat with it on the screen for a long time, reading it the way you re-read something when you know the words are the same but the meaning has changed entirely.
